Paper review and ball pens

Recently, I was judging some papers for some international conferences.

I usually use a multi-color pen to write comments down on the paper. A multi-color pen is quite helpful for me while reviewing because we can use various colors to write different types of comments like follows:

Red: Translation,
Blue: Objections,
Green: Questions.

I used to use ordinary multi-color ball pens, but the problem was the wide thickness of drawing. It is usually too wide and due to the lack of space, I could not write much information on it.

Thus I was looking for some solution and I found it last week.

HI-TEC-C 0.3 mm, an ultra thin ball pen, enables me to write detailed information on the paper. The point is that the HI-TEC-C's refill kit have a compatibility to other ordinary multi-color pens. This means that we can integrate our multi-color pens with the refills.

http://www.arghyle.com/2007/03/02/the-new-hi-tec-c-coleto/

All about Japan shows an interesting hack for making original mutli-pens by using the refill.

After this experience, I realized that tools are quite important to increse the productivity of our work and reduce frustration.